Fastest way to kilo a candidacy: Chafee calls for switch to metric in presidential bid

The Democratic presidential race got more crowded when Lincoln Chafee threw his hat in the ring... by calling for the US to go metric. The switch would be part of his plan for the US to become more of an international player, rather than a global bully.

"I happened to live in Canada as they completed the process.
Believe me it is easy," he added. "It doesn’t take long
before 34 degrees is hot. Only Myanmar, Liberia and the United
States aren’t metric and it will help our economy."

Chafee told CNN’s ‘New Day’ that the economic benefits of working
on the same system as the rest of the international community
would far outweigh the costs of the changeover. But his support
comes despite a failed attempt by the US to go metric in the
1970s. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
has had no luck garnering interest in so-called ‘metricazation’
since then, despite producing a series of catchy videos aimed at
supporting the metric system.

Chafee believes that, along with the economic benefits, the
switch would help improve America’s reputation in the
international community.

"This is just one piece, as I said, of becoming
internationalist as a country and getting away from that
unilateralist approach, that muscular approach to the world, that
I don't think is working in our best interests," he told
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview.

If we go metric, global warming will end because all
temperatures will be much lower

Chafee is most known for his staunch opposition to the Iraq War,
a subject he touched upon in his campaign announcement, declaring
that, as president, he would bring about a “New American
Century” where the US can “wage peace.”

He has long criticized fellow Democratic presidential candidate
Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the Iraq War while she
was a senator from New York in 2003. Chafee, then a Republican
senator, was the lone GOP legislator in that chamber to vote
against the war authorization.

In his speech, Chafee also blasted Clinton, the Democrats'
current frontrunner, for the private email and Clinton Foundation
controversies now swirling around her from
her time as secretary of state.

"Our State Department just has to be above all controversy,
and it's regrettable to me what's happening now with emails, with
the foundation that affects decision making coming out of State.
We just can't have that," Chafee said.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), the chairwoman of the
Democratic National Committee, called Chafee a “welcome
addition to the race.”

“Throughout his career, he has consistently demonstrated the
conviction to do what he felt was best for the people he
represents,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz described Chafee’s path to the Democratic Party
as indicative of the GOP’s failure to lead during President
Barack Obama’s tenure in office. Chafee voted for the president
twice, serving as Obama’s campaign co-chair in 2012.

“As a former Republican, Lincoln Chafee can help make the
case that his old party no longer represents the best interests
of the American people,” she said.

Despite the praise of his campaign kickoff from the Democratic
establishment, the party views him as a very dark-horse candidate
against powerhouse Clinton, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and former
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley… and that was before he made the
“bold” move to include the metric system in his
platform.

“I'm sorry to say this because I am a native Rhode Islander
and I would love to have a Rhode Islander in the White House for
the first time,” Brad Bannon, a national Democratic
strategist, told The Hill newspaper. “Once Sanders and
O'Malley got in, that was the curtain call for the Chafee
campaign.”

Chafee’s support for the “metricazation” of America may
have gained him at least one vote, however.

“Setting a standard of measurement should be a matter of
national assent,” Paul Trusten, the vice president of the US
Metric Association, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s
something that should be raised, not be made a matter of tyranny
but as a matter of leadership.’’

About time someone tried tapping into the single issue metric
system voters.

As a US senator ‒ when he was viewed as the last liberal
Republican ‒ Chafee consistently supported same-sex marriage,
abortion rights, raising the federal minimum wage and higher
taxes on the wealthy. He opposed the death penalty and drilling
for oil in Alaska. After he lost reelection to Democrat Sheldon
Whitehouse in 2006, Chafee ran for and won the Rhode Island
governorship in 2010 as an independent. He became a Democrat in
May 2013, while still governor, before opting not to seek a
second term in 2014.